Parts of Speech
by bouncingcrow
Summary: Post-movie, Uhura contemplates words and language as they relate to her memories with Spock. Rated for the one bad word at the very, very end and some suggestion.


**Disclaimer: Nope. Star Trek is not mine. **

**Author's Note: Watched Star Trek for the first time in a while today. Hooray! I've always liked the Uhura/Spock pairing in the new universe, so I wrote this. Hope it's fun.**

Xenolinguistics. The word itself rolls off of her tongue with the familiarity of her own name, and the meaning is inherent in her being. The study of alien languages. It is a funny thought to her, the term "alien", which of course means strange or foreign. But in the world now, it is so rare to find strange or foreign.

And the more she learned of other cultures, the more she found that they are all the same, with few exceptions.

Exceptions, she knew, was a noun, which meant a truth that broke the standard or the rules. Spock, another noun, a proper noun, was a suitable example for an exception. Instructor, yet another noun (she seems to be fond of them) is a person of authority who teaches or offers knowledge. And student, the opposite, is someone who is seeking knowledge.

Instructor and student were their respective roles when they met, she and Spock. Meeting being a verb that implies a time when the two first became aware of one another. And this was true. Growing up with her grandmother, Nyota had not dreamed of attending the Starfleet Academy and studying under the half-Vulcan. Likewise, it was doubtful that he had ever planned on meeting a human woman who would so challenge him.

Studying, a verb, which she had done a lot of. Spock had been a challenging instructor, pushing her to her limits and beyond. The studying and his challenging had paid off; she was top of the class, and her abilities were unsurpassed (adjective, meaning that no other students had put in the hard work that she had, nor reaped the benefits).

When she had completed her studies, she revisited undreamed realities, and that had opened a new path to her.

Spock, once again, the proper noun that crept up in her life repeatedly, always a surprise, always unexpected. Their minds sparked when they were close, and the flame grew between them, kept in check until it was no longer necessary to be watched with such a close eye.

Since meeting, their relationship had changed. Change was a common verb, common in that it happened a lot, not that people used it frequently. When a circumstance or person altered, that was change, and both they and their circumstances had been altered.

The first time (first, adjective, premier occurrence) she had noticed a difference was when their intellectual discussions were no longer confined to office hours. It had been at an academic party, such as they are, held by another department member, and they had spent the entire night in a stimulating conversation about the intricacies of Romulan dialects. And he had smiled at her; not a stupid, wide grin, but a restrained one, which she knew was genuine (another adjective, meaning real).

There were more parties, and then some more intimate dinners with colleagues, and then solo lunches, just the two of them. She liked that he treated her equally (adverb, demonstrating a belief that they were on the same level), and she liked that she was still challenged by him.

Kissing is a verb, the act of joining lips, usually in a display of affection. Vulcans, at least half-Vulcans, know about kissing.

She had learned that one night after a dinner party, as they had wandered through the grounds of the academy, after she had made the impassioned argument about her beliefs regarding the similarity of cultures and the few exceptions, pointing out even then that he was an exception, having successfully balanced his two seemingly irreconcilable parts. And then he was speechless, and then his lips were on hers, searing and unexpected (there was that word again). To this day, she was not sure if it was because of her compliment or an attempt to shut her up; she knew that sometimes she could be hot-headed.

But she was surprised when that wasn't the last one, either. There had been more after that, sometimes passionate like the first, and other times soft and questing. She began to know his lips the way she knew his language.

Then there was the first time they made love, which as an expression had always bothered her. To make, of course, being a verb that meant to create, and love being an emotion, she wasn't sure that the physical act of coitus was how the emotion was created. But in the heat of the moment, she hadn't been worried about such trivialities.

So now she was sitting in her quarters aboard the Enterprise, and she was wondering what word could describe what they were. In the heat of the situation with Nero, she had perhaps overstepped some bounds when she kissed Spock in the transporter bay. Oops. He had responded, and he did not seem angry, either.

But after a public display of affection, it would follow that questions would be asked. And she didn't think she had the words to answer them.

In light of her uncertainty and emotional turmoil, the only word she can think of at the moment, in all of the languages and dialects that she knows, is _fuck_.


End file.
